Remede de Fortune

Program: #23-04   Air Date: Jan 23, 2023

NOTE: All of the music on this program comes from the recording Remede de Fortune featuring the Blue Heron Ensemble directed by our guest Scott Metcalfe. It is on the Blue Heron label and is CD BHCD 1012.

Blue Heron

Scott Metcalfe, artistic director

Les Délices
Debra Nagy, artistic director

Owen McIntosh, tenor & drum
Jason McStoots, tenor 
Debra Nagy, recorder, douçaine & harp
Martin Near, countertenor & tambourine
Scott Metcalfe, fiddle & harp 
Charles Weaver, lute, baritone & hurdy-gurdy

A feast of poetry, song, and visual art animated by a surprisingly Zen-like philosophy, Guillaume de Machaut’s Remede de Fortune tells the tale of a woebegone lover who is counseled by Lady Hope on how to be happy and persevere in the face of the ups and downs dished out by Fortune and her Wheel. Machaut was at once the greatest poet and composer of 14th-century Europe, and the Remede is a narrative poem or dit, around 4000 lines long, with interpolated lyrics set to music. This live recording of a concert production of the Remede—a collaboration between two outstanding American ensembles, Blue Heron and Les Délices—includes all seven musical items from the Remede as well as a selection of other motets, songs, and dances, which take the place of the narration, express the emotions and thoughts of the Lover, and convey Hope’s teachings in lyric form. Four singers are joined by a delightful ensemble of medieval instruments (recorder, douçaine, fiddle, lute, harp, hurdy-gurdy, and percussion) in performances which are both spirited and deeply informed by the study of historical performance practices. The CD booklet contains complete texts and translations, an interspersed synopsis of the story, and numerous full-color reproductions of the pictures that grace the lavishly illustrated first manuscript copy of the Remede, prepared c. 1350 under Machaut’s supervision.

From Early Music America:

From Cicero to Shakespeare to the television game show Wheel of Fortune, the figure of Lady Fortuna—the ancient Roman goddess of luck and chance—has been an enduring literary and cultural symbol for over two millennia. In Guillaume de Machaut’s (1300-1377) long-form narrative poem, Le remède de fortune (The Remedy for Fortune), the Lady personifies capricious love, a force which, like luck, subjects those in its orbit to the mercy of unseen forces. dit, including its seven lyric poems set to music, is now a collaborative project between two of America’s leading historically informed ensembles, Blue Heron and Les Délices. The partnership has resulted in a captivating new album, Remede de Fortune, released on the Blue Heron label. an album out of Machaut’s poem is not a straightforward task. A full performance, if such a thing ever existed, would have amounted to a medieval multimedia project entailing hours of music and narration as well as the perusal of its vividly illuminated manuscript, held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. In a modern recording, the narration alone would test the mettle of even the most ardent medievalist, amounting to roughly 4,300 octosyllabic lines.

The ensembles’ artistic directors, Blue Heron’s Scott Metcalfe and Les Délices’ Debra Nagy, are not content to merely amputate the poem’s extra-musical elements. Instead, they draw from outside songs and motets that more concisely capture the narration’s themes. (In his thorough liner notes, Metcalfe jokes that “the Broadway production might be entitled Remede! The Musical.”)

The result is an album that is both musically compelling and narratively cohesive. Those with access to the text (which are included in the liner notes) will find Machaut’s didactic tale intact, recounting Lady Hope’s council to safeguard against the inconstant Lady Fortune, as well as the subsequent tale of love at first unrequited, later returned, and then again thrust into a state of uncertainty least, the album is musically satisfying. Listeners are thrust into the lovestruck inner world of trouvère-inspired love songs, while polyphonic motets and instrumental tracks serve to freshen the aural palate with added variety and thematic ballast.

Metcalfe (fiddle, harp) and Nagy (recorder, doućaine, harp) are joined by Owen McIntosh (tenor, drum), Jason McStoots (tenor), Martin Near (countertenor, tambourine), and Charles Weaver (baritone, lute, hurdy-gurdy). Each vocalist not only demonstrates a strong sense of musicality, but also the rhetorical prowess of a skilled orator, a necessary quality for a repertory with a less explicit text-to-music relationship than in later musical eras.Meanwhile, instrumental accompaniment illuminates rather than obstructs the vocal lines, a respite from the sea of oversaturated recordings better suited for Game of Thrones than Guillaume de Machaut.

The lai, “Qui n’aroit autre deport,” exemplifies the conceptual creativity and adept delivery that characterizes the album. Even when excerpted to last around 11 minutes (the original is about 45!), the song’s length creates the risk of falling into monotony. As a solution, McStoots, Near, and McIntosh divvy up the strophes to represent three distinct points of view, and Metcalfe performs one strophe as an instrumental interlude. The result of careful attention to the mood of each word, line, and strophe contributes to a richly varied and vivid elucidation of the text.

Even in instrumental arrangements of songs, players seem to sing through their instruments. In the ballade, “Gais et joli,” Nagy and Weaver allow themselves to be guided by the unsung text, connecting long melismas over single words, mirroring vowels and consonances in their articulation, and organizing phrases like a singer.

While it is skill rather than fortune that has resulted in this rendition of Remede de Fortune, it is nonetheless a stroke of luck to receive an album so well-crafted and expertly performed. — Jacob Jahiel

1. Ci commence Remede de Fortune, 2:02
2. Ballade: Esperance qui m’asseure (B13), 5:04
3. Lai: Qui n’aroit autre deport (RF1), 11:01
4. Motet: Hareu, hareu! / Helas! ou sera pris confors / Obediens usque ad mortem (M10), 1:57
5. Ballade: Gais et jolis (instrumental) (B35), 1:28
6. Complainte: Tieus rit au main qui au soir pleure (RF2), 8:37
7. Chant royal: Joye, plaisance, et douce nourreture (RF3), 6:42
8. Motet: Qui es promesses de Fortune / Ha Fortune / Et non est qui adjuvet (M8), 1:37
9. Baladelle: En amer a douce vie (RF4), 4:38
10. Ballade: Dame de qui toute ma joie vient (RF5), 4:56
11. Motet: Trop plus est bele que Biauté / Biauté parée de valour / Je ne sui mie certeins (M20), 2:36
12. Jehan de Lescurel (arr. Nagy), Virelai: Dis tans plus (instrumental), 1:14
13. Virelai: Dame, a vous sans retollir (RF6), 4:02
14. Messe de Nostre Dame: Kyrie I, 1:01
15. Estampie Ay mi! dame de valour / Dame, vostre doulz viaire (arr. Nagy), 3:24
16. Rondelet: Dame, mon cuer en vous remaint (RF7), 4:46
17. Ballade: Biauté qui toutes autres pere (B4), 5:37
18. Motet: Trop plus est bele que Biauté / Biauté parée de valour / Je ne sui mie certeins (M20), 2:04

Composer Info

Guillaume de Machaut’s (1300-1377)

CD Info

Blue Heron CD BHCD 1012